A Canopy of Stars
by Plains Pirate
Summary: It was once said that the sky could not fall. Then it did, and it was said that the sky could not fall twice. It would come to pass, within that same century, that far worse things than stars could fall. But humanity has faced impossible odds before, and such odds have always resulted in those who could take up the sword, the gun, the flight stick, and save the day.
1. Prologue: The Beginning of Knowledge

**a****n: **i got it up when i intended to! late as hell, but i did it! for once! i amaze even myself sometimes.

**disclaimer: **what high bars you set for yourself.

**an: **well, i did it didn't i? and i believe you have something to do.

**disclaimer: **you didn't do it with your last mass effect crossover, did you?

**an: **_so?_

**disclaimer: **fine. mass effect is, unfortunately, property of ea and bioware. ace combat is property of project aces and bandai-namco. the author owns none of these.

* * *

**prologue: the beginning of knowledge**

**Milky Way Galaxy, Midgard Nebula, Sol System**

**Promethei Planum, Mars**

**Basset Space Center Mission Control Room, Osea**

**July 20, 2041 CE**

**3:17 AM Oured Time**

**_«_**_**Basset, Prometheus Base here.**_**_»_**

Dead silence in the control room. This wasn't the first mission to Mars, not by a long shot, but it was the first _manned_ one.

**_«_**_**Ares has landed.**_**_»_**

The room, the building, hell all of Basset Space Center and quite possibly the whole of Cape Blindada exploded into cheers. CAPCOM Kei Nagase, however, could only release a breath she wasn't even aware she was still holding.

She could have been up there. Hell, with her level of experience walking around extraterrestrial bodies, she _should _have been up there. Sure, 54 was on the long end of an astronaut's career, even with modern cybernetic and medical technology, but she was the first human to step, stand, sleep, and plant nuclear torches on an asteroid. Exploring the polar caps of Mars as one of the first humans to stand on it should have been child's play, with Mars being a good deal closer than 2010DK117 Telemachus.

And a good deal larger.

And a good deal more in possession of an atmosphere, bitter cold as it was.

Nagase leaned back in her chair. It had been a rough ride in the last year. An undiscovered asteroid had passed a little too close for comfort to the Megaptera transport Neucom had provided for mankind's first visit to another planet. Then Neucom and General Resources had, for one reason or another, come to blows all over Usea. They had to evacuate from Riass Space Center in Comona because General Resources had tried to bomb it. _Then, _as if that wasn't bad enough, it came to public knowledge that the whole damn war was orchestrated by a General Resources employee in an almost ludicrous bid for power, revenge, and shifting the balance of power in the corporate world.

It would be sad, if Simon Orestes Cohen didn't have enough allies in General Resources and UPEO to put up a fight even after that news was released to the world. Instead, it was infuriating. At least the Grey Men had done what they did for a twisted sense of love for their country.

This? This was just greed for power, plain and simple.

Nagase grabbed a nearby water bottle and took a long swig, watching as the helmet cams from Pilgrim XVIII (and the camera from the drone) came online. Soon, the middle of the massive screen in front of her changed from a render of the Megaptera's lander and rover to the live feed from all three cameras. There was the lander, in Neucom's signature cobalt blue and white. There was a ridge, part of the foothills leading up to the Chasma Australe.

In years to come, it would be the territorial boundary of a museum for early Martian exploration on the outskirts of the city of Qadesh, initially a research outpost meant to study what was beyond the opposite ridge. But for now, it was just a dusty, frozen, brownish-red heap of rocks.

"Suit pressure good," said Clancy Ryder, the Osean commander of the human expedition, "temperature good… minus fifty-eight degrees Celsius external temp, warmer than expected, internal temp… eighteen point six two."

**_«_**_**And the gravitational anomalies?**_**_» _**Edward Grimm, Hans's son, had detected them from up in the orbiter on approach, centered a few kilometers away from the initial landing site. Those on Ryder and Hoffman's suits couldn't detect it at that range, and those on the Adrestia rover and the Aethon MRV could just barely detect it.

But on the surface? It was loud and clear, and whatever it was, it was to the southwest.

The minutes tick by as the signal travels across the void the tens of millions of miles to Mars.

"Too far to go on foot. I'm getting the rover out," Gary Hoffman said as he proceeded to do so. Far from jury-rigged frame with a motor of the Lunar Rover, or the pile-of-boxes of earlier Osean Mars Rovers, Adrestia and Aethon were both sleek, sturdy-looking machines in blue and white, designed to be tough enough to last for months on Mars. Adrestia was _just _large enough to comfortably house the human-level AI and a suite of sensors, whereas Aethon was about the size of a (small) camper, with additional sensors that were just too big to carry on Adrestia. Since it was meant to be left behind, it was also a lot tougher.

It also looked like a spider-APC with windows and fold-in wheels, but that was besides the point. The point was that it could be folded up just enough to fit on a drop pod, and the glass windows wouldn't be scratched to hell by a Martian dust storm. Real windows, too, not COFFIN – less weight, fewer points of failure.

Mars had a bit less than two-fifths the gravity of Earth, but the suits were bulky enough that Hoffman still had to help Ryder up with a _hup_ to get him the rest of the way from the ladder into the cockpit.

They rode on, for several minutes, going on half an hour. Perhaps they could have gone faster, but Ryder didn't want to stress test the Aethon until they were doing something less… _risky._ However risky gravitational anomalies greater than anything ever recorded on Earth outside of an exotic physics lab could be. Ryder gave regular reports, and Hoffman kept himself busy by other means – checking the sensors, running Adrestia through 'games' designed to test her ability to handle software bugs, and the like.

Their journey eventually took them to the edge of Deseado Crater, some sixty kilometers from the landing site. On the outer edge of the crater, they found a shallow cave.

Inside the cave was an enormous, greenish-black slab of metal that revealed itself to be a door as the Aethon approached. Beyond the door?

It was a vast, ancient, alien complex, buried by the eons.

In one part, artifacts within revealed an alien race's observation of humanity, with autonomous microsatellites continuing their observation right up to the Belkan Bronze Age. In another, evidence of attempts at a colony – farming techniques, computer schematics, and designs for walking machines that could shift to a 'flight mode' that could handle atmospheres from Venusian to Plutonian.

In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new technologies, enabling travel to the furthest stars. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space and time.

Some called it the greatest discovery of the twenty-first century, alongside human-level AI, microwave energy transmission, and the Electrosphere.

The civilizations of the galaxy called it... Mass Effect.

* * *

**CODEX: **_Neucom: __Periophthalamus –_ A large, roughly cone-shaped lander designed specifically for Mars, built by Neucom Incorporated. It uses a combination of a microwave energy transmitter, Aeon generators, and traditional chemical rockets to 'hop' across the Martian landscape. It can travel hundreds of kilometers at a time before it needs to recharge or refuel. The addition of Aeon generators causes a slight increase in weight, and the drives do not work outside of a planetary atmosphere, but the reduced danger thanks to smaller chemical fuel tanks was deemed worth it to early Martian explorers until ME-based drives could be developed. Like its lunar twin, it is named after a genus of mudskippers.

**an: **Next chapter will almost certainly be a skip to First Contact. Almost certainly.


	2. I: Angels Unawares - Shakedown

**an: **happy 25th anniversary, ace combat! plus or minus a few days for shipping and handling. wew lad, this took a lot longer than i intended, partly because i tried to write some chapters for my other fics before getting around to this one. can you believe i first started this chapter in february?

**disclaimer: absolutely.**

**an: **well, you didn't have to be so _bold _about it! and i did get it up within a few days of the anniversary.

**disclaimer: **still late.

**an: **still counts. now it's your turn to get to work.

**disclaimer: **mass effect is, unfortunately, property of ea and bioware. ace combat is property of project aces and bandai-namco. the author owns none of these.

* * *

**chapter i: ****a****ngels unawares**** / ****shakedown**

First Contact with humanity was an interesting event in galactic history. Not merely due to the enormous watershed that the unusual path Earth's technology brought about, but because technically humanity had two first contacts, both within one Galactic Standard day of each other. At least, according to historians who knew their stuff.

If you ask the average citizen of one of the Council races, or some of the (slightly-more-than-average) fervent supporters of the Citadel government, first contact occurred with the turians, on the other side of a relay from the human colony of Sonza.

**O****ured Nebula (NGC 7000)**

**Unnamed Space, Relay 314 (Far Side of Bingzhou Relay)**

**July 28, 2060 CE**

The small probe shot out of the mass relay, holding its orientation in an unnatural manner while the relay still had a hold on it. Once released it pitched, it rolled, it flopped a bit, like a human who hadn't yet realized it had been thrown into the water, and wasn't very good at swimming anyway.

Tiran Silvanus stood, bent over to get a better look at the readings from the active sensors as displayed by the technician's screen. His ship, the _Cavarran_, was but a simple patrol frigate, wholly unremarkable compared to other turian patrol frigates of its class, neither performing admirably nor shamefully in its few combat actions against Terminus pirates. In fact, its unremarkability was in and of itself unremarkable. Most ships of its age, and indeed of its class, would have and have done something notable by this point in its lifespan.

Not the _Cavarran._

Not until now.

_That's the third one this month,_ he thought as he observed the birdlike probe completely fail to locate his ship. That wasn't its fault – a mass relay emitted no radiation, and apart from its position (almost) every relay was like every other one. A relay was therefore wholly uninteresting to a probe meant for exploration – perhaps even a nuisance, as it blocked out imaging of the stars behind it, however few that may be. Thus, the probe would (and did) put as much distance between itself and the relay as possible before it began to do anything.

Which made a relay a perfect hiding spot for a patrol vessel, so long as one knew how to keep radiation levels low. Not a difficult feat for a lightly-armed ship.

"Are you absolutely sure it matches no known records? None at all?" he asked the turian at the station over which he stood.

The sublieutenant – Lantar Pirot, barely past an ensign, really – nodded shakily. "I even checked its transmissions," he said. "Whatever it is, it's based on prothean code languages, at least."

"So we can communicate with it?"

"In theory, at least," the sublieutenant replied. "Talking with it is another matter, unless there's an asari I don't know about on board."

There was not, of course, an asari the sublieutenant didn't know about on board.

Tiran nodded, then walked over to the nearby intercom.

_**«Astrometrics,» **_came a voice from the other side.

"Lieutenant Bassus," said Tiran, "you studied graphic design at the Academy, correct?"

. . . . . .

Of all the things the probe's AI expected to happen today, an alien spaceship sneaking up on it and beaming a first contact package directly at it, across all channels, was not one of them.

Having roughly the mind of a middle schooler (but with doctorates in every field relevant to its task), it was understandably excited as its circuits could handle. As it fired a tightbeam communication back towards the relay, it went over the message in its 'head'.

It was brilliant, really – there was no possible way for any biological species to learn a language in the few hours of contactless contact they had, and the arrow-shaped ship before it was clearly full of biological life. So they used images instead.

The animated image showed the probe and the alien ship in proximity, then a zoom bubble on what could only be the cabin, showing a pair of scaly-faced aliens with just enough physical differences to make it clear this was a species with two biological sexes.

The two aliens gave a wave, then speech bubbles appeared above a drawing of the probe and the aliens – both very different, though the aliens' speech probably said something more than gibberish. Nothing the AI could interpret – it didn't have language analysis software on board advanced enough for that.

The diagram moved to the side, and in the empty space there appeared a model of the system and a timer. A blowup balloon of the nearest planet to the probe and the ship appeared in time with a timer, which counted up a "second" before exploding to some vast amount of time as the planet spun about – using a base-100 instead of a sexagesimal time system momentarily threw it for a loop – that the AI estimated to be about four days.

When the timer finally stopped, a new ship appeared, purplish-blue and shaped like a plus sign with a hole in the middle. Another balloon, this one with a blue, feminine alien with… a bicycle helmet? No, that was its actual head. The new alien waved, then the two ships docked and it appeared in the bubble with the scaly aliens. The blue alien spoke some more gibberish, then touched its head to one of the scaly aliens. Its eyes flashed black, then it moved away and started speaking the scaly alien language!

So they _did _have a species capable of learning languages near-instantly? Convenient!

A new ship arrived, which was probably supposed to be a human ship considering how much it resembled the probe (boy were they in for a shock), and on board it had generic-looking featureless figures speaking the same gibberish as the probe. The blue alien boarded the "human ship", touched its head to the "human", and was soon speaking the human-gibberish. The blue alien handed the "human" a box, and balloons appeared around it showing even more aliens, a few planets, some generic-looking documents, and a space station.

In short, the scaly alien ship had called for a diplomatic vessel with a translator and a more formal first contact package on board, and it would arrive in four days.

By the time it had finished reviewing the clip in real-time, the probe's mothership, the UXS _Resolution_, had sent humanity's official reply.

As tradition had long since dictated for in the event of first contact, it started with an image of the Pioneer plaque. After a few seconds, it faded away to show the same scene as in the data received. This time, however, the probe responded in 1s and 0s, and was joined by the _Resolution _which, being an AI-controlled ship, also responded in 1s and 0s. The probe reattached itself to the _Resolution_'s cross-shaped hull and waited out the events unfolding as the timer counted up – a new bubble appeared with the _Resolution _AI's multi-limbed chassis giving a wave before the vessel docked with the scaly alien ship, and the two ships started 'speaking' until they learned each other's 'language'.

It wasn't long – about three days, so before the blue aliens' ship – that the _real _human ship was expected to arrive, a graceful Neucom-made diplomatic ship, complete with the ubiquitous closed wing sweeping up and back to join the 'tail' just above the main engines.

From the windows of the ship came balloons, showing both biological sexes and all of humanity's races, all giving the same wave. At last, the blue alien's ship arrived, and two of the humans exchanged a yellow circle for the box.

So excited was the _Resolution's _and the probe's AI that they failed to notice the transmissions from the turian vessel taking on a worrying tone.

* * *

Such was the "official" first contact of humanity with another alien race, the one found in textbooks, scientific journals, official Citadel documentation, and the like. The nice, clean one, even if the STG quite literally blew a gasket upon learning that there was yet _another _race with AI. They would blow more the more they learned about the NUN's grasp of synthetic intelligence, and still more when they discovered that the integration of AI in human society went far, far, _far _beyond that even of the Geth and the quarians.

But that was not the "real" First Contact. The one celebrated on Earth with holidays and celebrations, the one humanity Cared about, the one shown in documentaries and movies and other forms of entertainment. That happened with the quarians… and the batarians.

* * *

**Running Man Nebula**** (****Sh2-279****)**

**4****2 Orionis**** System**

**SNV _Directus_**

**J****uly 28, 2060 CE**

Protoplanetary discs made excellent training grounds, thought Harrison Williams as his ship braked to a stop a few thousands of kilometers above the disc. In particular, he was positioned above an infant gas giant, a brilliantly blue sphere roughly half again the size of Neptune, with colossal, hazy rings nearly twice the width of the planet itself.

The SNV _Directus _was a relatively new cruiser of the _C__or__-_class, with the old-submarine-shaped hull and an enormous closed wing of a span greater than the length of the ship, capped by heavy lasers on each end as additional armament to the spinal-mounted railgun. A fairly typical design shared in some variations across all human-crewed ships, though the _C__or__-_class featured three engines instead of the usual two for a SARF heavy cruiser.

As his ship nosed slightly down and over to take a long, lazy circle over the scene below though, he reminded himself that the _Directus _was not the star of this show. The star lay down below, near the "surface" of the ring.

An Arsenal Star, that is – a prototype of an idea proposed not long after the Lighthouse War's end, scaled up to the extreme thanks to mankind's ascent to the heavens and the prothean technology found on mars. An enormous drone carrier in the shape of a bone-white flying wing, nearly a kilometer and a half across and hosting nearly as many drones as there were aircraft involved in the entire Second Battle for the Lighthouse. AI-commanded, AI-crewed, there were only a handful of human crew members on board as an oversight measure and in event of emergencies. The SANV _P__olaris_was her name, and she was hoped to be the first of many.

He relaxed a little into his captain's chair before keying the microphone built into it.

_**«All hands, all stations, all present… this is Captain Williams of the **_**Directus****_. Commence the shakedown operation. _Polaris_,_ _you may launch picket fighters when ready.»_**

**\- prologue 01 : shakedown -**

One by one, from either wingtip of the enormous craft, eight pairs of picket fighters dropped from the hull and sped away. For the most part, they were similar to the angular interceptors they were based on – fast, reasonably maneuverable, well-armed, and with a respectable amount of shielding. In truth, the differences between picket fighters and interceptors were few but noticeable – a substantially larger fuel supply, more efficient engines, and a greater reliance on weight-saving lasers instead of railguns like true interceptors used. Being AI-piloted, they were meant to stay out on BARCAP (BARrier Combat Air Patrol) as long as possible. In some cases, that could mean days.

_**«Picket fighters away,» **_responded the voice of the _Polaris_'s AI as the drones bulleted away from the ship, just close enough to graze the top of where the planet's "real" ring began.

_**«**__**Confirmed, we have them on radar,» **_said a voice from the ops station. Elias Seidel, a Belkan petty officer, had his eyes glued to the holographic sphere as he watched blips speed away from the _Polaris_. A much larger holographic sphere appeared in the empty space between the captain's chair and the screen at the front of the main bridge, showing the same thing.

"Let's get started, shall we?" asked Williams rhetorically.__"Helm, bow down seventy degrees, maintain course. Fire control, let's provide some rocks for the _Polaris _pickets to shoot at, to begin with. Keep their starting points nice and distant – we'll go easy on them… for now."

**MES (Migrant Extraction Vessel) _Vishvak_**

Protoplanetary discs made excellent mining grounds, thought Gal'Jagar vas Vishvak as he looked out the small window of his personal quarters. No inhabitants, no Citadel patrolcraft, and best of all, no of those four-eyed, slaving, batarian bastards. He knew that damn well, because he and his team had finally managed to lose a group of batarian pirates, before taking a roundabout route here.

"Volunteer patrol fleet." What a joke.

The entire ship began to hum with noise as the engines powered up for the day. A spaceship never really "shut off" unless something was seriously wrong, but it could run cold(er) – coasting around, hiding among asteroids, running the engine just enough to keep the lights on. A ship from the Council races could pick up the simplistic technique easy enough, but Terminus pirates liked their prey easy and stupid, and would either pass it by for something simpler, or their mistreated sensors wouldn't pick it up at all.

He walked over to his computer as his envirosuit began the morning cleaning procedures. He sighed, as he looked over the ship's passive sensor reports. It seemed this disc wasn't as pristine as he believed – there were a few odd-looking ships doing… something. Ah well, this area _was _close enough to the Terminus to be at least somewhat feasible for mining, and there _was _a mass relay nearby. They were a good distance away, and hadn't noticed him yet. As long as they didn't bother him, he wouldn't bother them.

That was simply how things were in the Terminus, and he doubted they'd change anytime soon.

**P.V. ****(Patrol Vessel)**_**Koprak**_

Protoplanetary discs made piss-poor hunting grounds, thought Bratin Graffeth, as he impatiently watched his ship draw nearer and nearer to the star in which he had tracked that little shit Gal'Jagar. Sure, there was the mass relay in the system, but that was as good as announcing to all the system that you were there, and hunting for people the Hegemony wanted enslaved required stealth. Finesse. A level of intelligence beyond that of the average Terminus scum.

Someone like Bratin Graffeth, for example. Being a large nebula, several of the stars had mass relays, and with them being so close together, it wasn't all that hard to make the jump between systems by pure FTL. A pain in the ass, maybe, but a few days in the black between stars was worth this kind of pay. He could buy a cruiser for the amount someone was willing to pay for Gal'Jagar.

Hell, he could buy two cruisers. One for fighting, one for partying. Now that was decadence.

And even hiding in a half-lightyear-wide mess of rocks, ice, and dust wouldn't save Gal'Jagar. Bratin didn't get where he did by cheaping out on sensors.

Or guns, he thought with a malevolent grin. The contract was only for Gal'Jagar, after all. If he put up a fight, well… nobody would care if there was only _one _survivor. Quarians didn't sell like they used to, and he had _four_ ships to run – three light patrol vessels, and the _Koprak, _which was technically a frigate but classified as a patrol vessel. Saved on parking at Omega, and as long as he continued to bring in a profit, Aria was willing to look the other way.

Aria was willing to look the other way on a lot of things, so long as it kept Omega running, preferably under her thumb.

"All right you pack of varrens," he said with a clap, "let's get down to business."

**SANV _Polaris_**

Things were going very well, thought 4484 A Swarm Of Ants, the AI of the _Polaris_. Simulations were great, but humans liked real, hard experience for a reason, and her drones were getting a lot of it out there, running training drills among the trillions of floating rocks.

To the eye of the untrained observer, the flight of the drones seemed no different to that of an airshow, or the playful flights of children with their first childlike AI drones. In truth, it was closer to the latter, and closer still to the mock dogfights of airshows, but there was far less caution here. A keen eye (or a keen AI) would notice that each drone took itself as close to recklessness as it dared. Or at least, as close as the regulations of the training op allowed.

Having so many drones at her disposal, Swarm could break them down into dozens of teams consisting of a few flights each, each practicing one thing or another – BARCAP, BARCAP breaking, interception, defensive flying, formation flying, small surface attack, the like. The only things the drones _weren't _training for were orbit-to-surface attacks and capital ship attacks – the planet they were orbiting was a gas giant, and the _Directus _was but a heavy cruiser.

She turned her attention to the simulated environment that was constraining the drones, from the ones practicing within practically visual range of her command's hull, all the way out to the picket drones (which, while part of the environment, were not part of the training drills). The current constraint was a "deck" some three kilometers below her hull, right at the edge of where the protoplanet's ring thinned out to match the density of the protoplanetary disc, and a "ceiling" a half-kilometer above her hull. Horizontally, the simulated environment included everything within one thousand kilometers. Plenty of space to fly about freely, by astronomical standards, while still providing the full breadth of the ring to allow hiding spots, and still giving the picket drones a wide berth.

She checked the time again. Almost an hour and a half, which meant it was time to shake things up with a simulated thunderstorm. Why the humans wanted her to test her drone's performance in a simulated thunderstorm in space was beyond her, but-

_**«KNOCK IT OFF, KNOCK IT OFF, KNOCK IT OFF.»**_

All activity ceased as one of the picket drones sounded the "stop mucking about and hold position before something dangerous happens" command. Faster than the speed of thought, the drone's eyes were Swarm's eyes, and she saw as it saw as the _Directus_'s AI, 2601 Condescending Gratitude, linked with her own "mind" to see as they did.

No words were shared, even in the form of 1s and 0s, as the image they "saw" was clear – A small ship, slightly smaller than a frigate but bulkier, consisting of a series of boxes connected to a vertical, rotating donut of metal. Across the donut stretched a pair of metal bars just big enough to be passageways, maybe with cramped quarters, with a more pronounced "bridge" at the front.

Even without the writing on the side, it was clearly _not human._

_**«4484 A Swarm Of Ants,» **_asked Williams as his brain caught up with what the AI had realized – no doubt Condescending Grattitude had shown him the same thing - **_«..is that..?»_**

_**«SANV **_**Polaris **_**to SARF STRATCOM. Unidentified bogey detected, **__**1328 hours 3.18532 seconds. No match to any known human vessel – confirm, **__**potential**__** X-Ray detected. **__**Request confirmation.**__**»**_

Minutes, precious minutes, slow to a human but all the more agonizing to an AI, passed as the message bounced from disposable comm buoy to mass relay to comm buoy to mass relay, all the way to the QEC at the Theta Orionis Primary Relay, and then straight on to STRATCOM headquarters in the Vladimir Mountains near what once was Cruik Fortress, where it would be relayed to the human and AI SARFCOM heads, and likewise the human and AI heads of NUN's Foreign Office. Minutes that stretched further as the humans involved in what would no doubt be the biggest event since the discovery of Ulysses confirmed what their AI partners had already determined.

_**«STRATCOM to SANV **_**Polaris****_.»_**

If Swarm had breath, she would be waiting with it bated.

_**«Calculations from AI STRATCOM 3601 **__**Vox Populi**__**: 97.808% chance of non-human entity. Within acceptable parameters.»**_

_**«Calculations from AI S**__**ECSARF**__** 3343 Shameless Thunder: 98.206% chance of non-human entity. Within acceptable parameters.»**_

_**«Calculations from AI FORMIN 1103 I Swear I'll Meet The Next Deadline: 99.927% chance of non-human entity. Within acceptable parameters.»**_

_**«Confirmations received from STRATCOM Gregory Elwood, SECSARF Austin Faulkner, FORMIN **__**Tyson Udina. X-Ray confirmed. Congratulations, **_**Polaris**_**.»**_

Cheers could be heard over the microphones all across the _Directus_, though the bridge managed to keep it down to polite clapping… mostly.

_**«You should have the Informal First Contact package already on board, **_**Polaris****_. Send it over to the X-Ray at your discretion.»_**

**MES _Vishvak_**

Things were going smoothly, all things considered. Whatever group had been hanging about in this system, they hadn't done much in the way of mining, and there was plenty mining to be had. No jackpots, sadly – best Gal'Jagar could find were some tantalum deposits – but more than enough to make a tidy profit.

Past tense being the key here.

Getting the attention of a fighter-sized drone, especially an unfamiliar one, was never good. It was almost avian in appearance and a stark white, with only the tips of the wings and vertical control surfaces in a different color, this being a dark blue.

It was bulky – two sizable engines either side of a fuselage too flat to possibly hold any living thing _and _enough electronics to run a drone. The engines were large and aerodynamic, but still seemed oversized for the chevron-shaped drone. It reminded him of a pair of krogans holding up an asari between themselves. As it slowly flew circles around his ship, green particles jetted out of small bumps on the wings – they couldn't have been maneuvering thrusters, they were too small and the particles too few.

After several minutes of the damn thing just flying around him like a hungry varren, it finally stopped just off his bow. It waved its wings, pointed its nose upwards, and turned on its navigation lights before flying off.

It couldn't have said "follow me" more clearly than if it had shouted it in Keelish on all channels.

Cautiously, he did, staying close enough to it for the drone to stay in visual range, but far enough back to make it clear he didn't really trust the drone enough for formation flying. Not that he didn't doubt even his old mining ship could handle a single drone, but there was no such thing as a drone flying all on its lonesome out in the black.

Besides slowing down to weave from side to side, presumably to ensure it was still being followed visually, the drone just kept flying on. It wasn't long before they reached what destination the drone had in mind. There was a cruiser, as its size and the length of its hull meant it couldn't be any different, but what really caught Gal'Jagar's attention was…

"Keelah, it's _huge_," said his navigator, Shen'Xola nar Tyberna. And it was. By tonnage, the enormous white flying wing was a dreadnought, but someone must not have told whoever made it that nobody builds carriers anymore, because there was no way it was packing any better railgun than a light cruiser's. All the drones in the world wouldn't save that flimsy thing from one good shot from a turian battleship.

The enormous carrier slowly approached the _Vishvak_, flashing its own navigation lights at regular intervals. Once they were about a kilometer apart, the carrier stopped and began to transmit something.

"It's..."

Shen'Xola and the comms "officer", Gan'Shumas vas Vishvak, were glued to the large physical screen on the starboard side of the bridge. As Gal'Jagar turned his seat to face it, he couldn't blame them.

It wasn't every day a quarian received a First Contact package.

**P.V. _Koprak_**

Bratin couldn't believe his good fortune. He actually had to rein his laughter back in, and he almost never laughed. The situation was so perfect, he almost suspected a setup.

There was his target, completely oblivious to his presence. And there was a brand new species with two ships, one of them being a _carrier _of all things, that probably didn't even have as good a gun as his own _Koprak_. There was also a cruiser, yes, but pre-First Contact ships were all trash in one way or the other. Even the Hegemony was willing to admit their first interstellar warships were crap.

It was a bit of a long shot, but he had decent enough aim. Even if he missed, he was confident of success. A little show of force, a bit of convincing, maybe some "convincing" if necessary, and he'd be headed back towards Omega with slave (or slaves) in tow. If his luck held out, the new species might even be willing to trade a few slaves themselves!

He chuckled and shook his head. Fat fucking chance there were slaves on board those ships. A cruiser was too small, and that carrier looked too thin.

"All right, give 'em a few shots. One on the suit rat's engines, one for the cruiser, and a few on that carrier."

**MES _Vishvak_**

It was a moment that would go down in the history of both their species, quarians and these "humans."

It was an awe-inspiring moment of discovery, one marked by peaceful contact and exchange of ideas (even if Gal'Jagar had sent over little more than some translation software for Keelish and the usual linguae francae, his ship specifications, and what was essentially a pocketbook version of the Codex, far less than what he was receiving.)

It was the sort of thing that burned into your memory, your children's memories, and the memories of your children's children.

It probably would have been a lot more awe-inspiring if the humans hadn't decided to show off how many languages they still had on their homeworld, this "Earth". Because now, his VI was having to try and translate every.

Single.

One.

Into Keelish, and that took time for a computer not meant for the task.

At least they had started with some of their own lingaue francae, and he was now watching a sort of visual tour of Earth and their home system, with a voiceover in Osean entitled "Pale Blue Dot". Shots of their largely-ocean planet from an airless moon, gas giants, and the edge of their home system were interspersed with rolling plains crossed by brown quadrupeds, cities ranging from wood-and-clay villages to floating cities and underground arcologies, and everything from vast deserts to crater-marked jungles.

It was humbling, but it was also clearly out of date – a speech about a species being alone in the universe and having but one planet to call home may have resonated with him to some degree, but it still felt out of place during a First Contact.

When the voiceover ended, it shifted to imagery that made a bit more sense. The moon of Earth and the system's fourth planet were shown, now sporting domed cities, along with a few other moons and large asteroids in-system. A primitive probe with a dish on its back was replaced again and again by ones more compact, more capable, or both. New systems were shown, featuring colonies both with and without domes. Space stations, space ships, whole cities floating in the void.

The humans themselves were completely silent throughout the display, seemingly content to let the quarians on board bask in the "glory" of their skill with cameras and video editing. He had to admit, it was engrossing.

So engrossing, that he didn't notice the fighter that had led him here speed away from the bow of his ship, nor did he notice it powering up its shields to the point that it visibly slowed down.

In fact, he didn't notice anything was going on outside until a railgun round slammed into his ship with an impotent _thunk._

"Shit."

_**«Taking fire! Combat stations!»**_

He slammed his chair back to its forward position and wheeled the ship around, hard, to point what little armament it had in the direction the slug came from. He was surprised to see the drone in (mostly) one piece – gored straight through, maybe, but it hadn't been shattered to a thousand bits of slag, so whatever shields these humans put on them, they could take a beating.

Beyond the drone's corpse lay an all-too-familiar ship, barely large enough to qualify as a frigate.

"Shit, him again."

_**«**__**You know that [ship]?» **_asked Williams. Seems they were having some trouble with Keelish themselves. Another slug came sailing in, this one towards the cruiser – the [_Directus_]. Like with the _Vishvak_, the round did nothing, spinning harmlessly through space once it passed through the human vessel's particularly strong kinetic barriers.

"Unfortunately. Bratin Graffeth. He's a bounty hunter of sorts, though these days he mostly gets by selling particular individuals to slavers."

Another slug arrived, this one aiming for the _Polaris_, but the dreadnought-sized carrier's shields stopped it cold.

"I'll send what I've got of the ship's schematics."

_**«Sorry, did you say **_**slavers****_?» _**asked an incredulous Williams.

"Yes. Batarian, of course. Other pirates in the Terminus do it, but everyone knows the Batarian government controls most of the trade, no matter what they claim."

Another slug arrived, and this one bounced off the carrier's shields, screaming upwards to be lost forever to the void.

_**«**_**Directus**_** to **_**Polaris**_**, target their shields and engines. I want them alive.»**_

_**«Gladly,» **_said the captain of the _Polaris_, with an almost mechanical coldness.

**SANV _Polaris_**

Swarm expected more from pirates impolite enough to interrupt a First Contact. Let alone that they were slave-trading _scum_, the guns they were packing barely knocked a few percentage points off her shields. Attacking a group of ships where the combat vessels alone outweigh them by orders of magnitude was the domain of the skilled and the foolish, and these "batarians" were clearly the latter.

Her drones flew out to meet the pirates, and they at least had the intelligence to try and simply charge through their line. She was momentarily worried when the pirate vessels opened up with defensive laser fire, but all the more disappointed when the lasers flowed harmlessly around the drone's shielding.

Was this really the best she would be up against? She… well, she hoped so for the sake of what few humans she had on board her ship, but still. Disappointing!

As a weight-saving measure, most of her own drones were armed with pulse lasers, but those pulse lasers still packed a punch. With the data from Gal'Jagar, she knew that the batarian's shields only blocked kinetic energy (and a very, very small amount of light in the visible spectrum), so there was no surprise when the violet beams from the drones passed right through, all but unhindered.

In seconds, the shields of the smallest ship began to fail, its projectors superheated beyond repair or melted to slag. The next two soon followed, one after another, and within a minute all three of the small ships were denuded and disabled. As they coasted listlessly through space, the _Koprak _continued to fight, displaying that at the very least, Bratin had a good helmsman among his crew. It even managed to knock out a handful of drones, both by focusing an entire line of defensive lasers and with the spinal gun.

Alas for the batarian, there were a lot more drones than the _Koprak _had lasers. What GARDIAN lenses weren't vaporized soon overheated, allowing the drones to pick off the remainder, along with what shielding was left. A single violet lance from the _P__olaris_'s primary laser cannon delivered the coup de grace by flash-melting the main thruster. She, too, was forced to a stop by the safety systems of her maneuvering thrusters.

Drones circled the paralyzed frigate like a pack of vultures. Even if it could have accelerated away, the drones blocked all routes of escape.

_**«Your shields are destroyed. Your defensive arrays are destroyed. Your engines are destroyed, or inoperable. Surrender, and we will grant you all rights as prisoners of combat by the Shilage Convention. Continue fighting, or attack after surrendering, and you and your ships will be destroyed.»**_

Silence reigned as the _Directus _approached to within five kilometers. The _Vishvak _floated alongside, though in a show of solidarity rather than force.

After a pregnant minute, a new voice channel opened up with a sigh, scratchy and tinny, as if the comms system was on the verge of failing:

_**«We surrender.»**_

**SNV _Directus_**

**T****wo hours**** later**

It took some finagling, but they had finally managed to get the airlock of the _Vishvak _to dock with those of the _Directus_. Sorta. The connection was very much not airtight, but crew in spacesuits could walk from one ship to another without complete exposure to the vacuum of space.

The _Koprak_'s airlock had been damaged too much to be used, but that was fine, the _Directus_ had a pair of shuttles with more than enough capacity for prisoners. The brig would be a little cramped, but a prison ship would be coming along with a proper diplomatic vessel from the Trapezium within the day.

Harrison Williams shook Gal'Jagar's hand, grabbing by the wrist as had been explained briefly in the Codex the quarian miner had provided.

"Sorry I can't be of more assistance," Gal'Jagar said.

Williams laughed. "You confirmed the existence of aliens, provided a basic rundown of who's who and what's what, helped us fight off a gang of slavers with minimal casualties, offered to lead us to this Migrant Fleet of yours, _and _provided a map of the known Mass Relay network? I'd call that going above and beyond."

"Well," the quarian replied, "I'm still no diplomat."

"Even better," responded Williams with a grin. They both had a laugh at that.

"With all honesty – you have our thanks. We'll stay in system until our other ships arrive, and we'll probably stick around your Migrant Fleet as long as we're needed, but if there's anything you need – within my power of course, I _am _just a captain–"

"For now."

"For now, yes. I'll ensure you get it. You _and_ your crew."

Gal'Jagar shook his head. "I found a species friendly enough to my people," _if a bit over-reliant on AI, _"with new technology, new opportunities for trade, and I finally got some slaving bosh'tet off my trail. To use your own phrase, that's "above and beyond" for me."

"If you say so. Well, if there's anything else you need-"

"I know what channel to contact you without broadcasting my position to every ship in range," he said with a nod. He pinched the mouthpiece of his envirosuit to seal its atmosphere completely, then stepped through the airlock door. It closed behind him with a barely-audible hiss, and the slowly quieting sound of the UV radiation warning.

Williams allowed his smile to remain for several seconds before lifting his omni-tool to his face. A four-eyed face appeared on a blue-tinted screen before him. Capture had not been kind to Bratin, though the MPs had stayed within the letter of the law while bringing him in.

_**«The hell do you want?» **_the batarian asked with an understandable lack of enthusiasm.

"Our conversation when my MPs boarded your ship was left… unfinished. I intend to correct that."

* * *

**CODEX: **_SARF Navy: SNV _Directus_ – _The third vessel of the _Cor-_class medium cruisers, the _Directus _is most famous for making First Contact with the quarians, alongside the SANV _Polaris_, which was then a classified prototype under the pseudonym "Project Argus". A vessel of the layout typical for human ships of the line, the _Directus _is six hundred meters long, with a wingspan of five hundred thirty meters. She features a single spinal-mounted main gun of four hundred meter's length, capable of striking with roughly the same force as one of the turrets of Old Stonehenge using lighter ammunition (~2-3 TJ, exact amount remains classified). She likewise features a pair of cruiser-class lasers whose energy output remains classified, but is believed to also be roughly 2 to 3 terajoules. Upon her retirement after the major overhauls of SARF ordered due to both observation and combat with the Citadel and Terminus races, the _Directus _was sold to the Migrant Heavy Fleet for the symbolic price of one credit, along with several other vessels to various divisions of the Migrant Fleet.

**a****n: **And that's first contact! For those having trouble picturing the _Directus_, go look up Project Wingman on Twitter and look for the most recent (as of this upload, July 2 2020) images of giant aircraft – the_ Directus_ is pretty close to that. Hopefully the next chapter won't take nearly as long, though I _will _be writing the next chapter of Magical Properties of the Rose next. I also have an announcement to make – as of this publication, _all _my fics, barring this and Magical Properties of the Rose, are up for adoption! Keep in mind, me confirming and accepting your adoption papers may take some time – I'd prefer to read some of your own fics before deciding on that, should you choose to adopt a fic of mine.


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